In the weekly and daily grind of cranking out compelling email content, it’s easy to forget to take account of your email marketing strategy and performance as a whole. We all probably know roughly what our week-to-week click rate looks like. But are we missing opportunities to help drive up that rate?

I propose that a little email marketing spring cleaning is a good idea. Your account will look cleaner and less cluttered. But the real benefit will be in better results for your email marketing strategy.

Pizza Fit'n Free uses its email marketing campaigns to help turn first time buyers into loyal customers.

The Akron, Ohio-based company makes and sells delicious fat-free and gluten-free pizzas. During online checkout, customers can sign up for the company's email campaigns to receive special offers.

Those campaigns routinely multiply the company's sales four-, five- and even six-fold, said CEO Steve Neid. And since campaigns include offers and discounts as well as words of encouragement and motivation for diet-conscious consumers, subscribers tend to stay with the company for a while.

Email Software RFP TemplateChoosing the right email marketing provider might seem like a daunting task for any organization — particularly those with specialized needs.

There are tons of things to consider when looking at a new Email Service Provider such as reliability, deliverability, features, ease-of-use and scalability to mention just a very few. Then you still have to sort through the marketing noise of dozens of ESPs — all of which focus on different aspects.

An RFP can be a great way to eliminate the noise and organize your search into manageable pieces that will ensure you're asking the right questions, comparing apples-to-apples and keeping it all organized to make the best decision possible for your particular needs.

We're biased, of course, about which email marketing platform we prefer. But we've seen a lot of RFPs over the years and we know that not every provider is right for every company's email needs. We have some thoughts about what makes for an effective email marketing RFP.

We've been on the receiving end of a lot of RFPs. Some were well thought out and clear and a few just weren't worth the time to respond. We've taken the best of all of them to create an easy-to-adapt, comprehensive RFP template that you can edit to meet your particular circumstances.

Even if an official RFP process is overkill for your organization, we recommend downloading and filling out the sections as you review various Email Service Providers.